1.8.1-Doeskin-pantaloons
Brick!Club 1.8.1: In what Mirror M. Madeleine contemplates his Hair (You all doing productive things with your lives, guys? There is really no-one around right now…) So, today Madeleine gets back home, and time passes in a non-chronological fashion: The worthy sister had been in the laboratory of the infirmary but a few moments, bending over her drugs and phials, and scrutinizing things very closely, on account of the dimness which the half-light of dawn spreads over all objects. And one explanation of how Fantine was yesterday later: It was broad daylight in the room. The light fell full on M. Madeleine’s face. I’m pretty sure this is not how dawn works, Hugo… Onto slightly more useful things, I’m interested in the blatant symbolism here: Sister Simplice had no mirror. She rummaged in a drawer, and pulled out the little glass which the doctor of the infirmary used to see whether a patient was dead and whether he no longer breathed. It’s also the chapter title, so Hugo clearly wanted us to make a big deal of this. Valjean is using this glass to discover the change in his hair colour - but also, symbolically, to discover whether or not he is dead. I figure this links to the identity thing we’ve been going through lately: Did Jean Valjean die when he became Madeleine? Could he ever really suppress that identity? Has Madeleine died now that he has revealed himself as Jean Valjean? Did Madeleine ever actually exist? Is Valjean/Madeleine going to be dead (either literally, metaphorically or spiritually) now that he has condemned himself to the galleys again? So many questions! The answer, to all of the above, is "Well!" Or the revelation that his hair is white. Although the chapter title tells us that he ‘contemplates’ it, he really hardly spares his hair a second thought. But from the way Hugo has set this chapter up, I assume that the hair is heavily symbolic - of a character transition? Obviously, this - after the Bishop - is the next great turning point in Valjean’s life. And we know from past experience that whiteness symbolises goodness, on various levels. So does his hair - as well as being reflective of the stress he has just undergone - represent his ultimate transcedence beyond the ‘evil’ Jean Valjean of the galleys, into the ‘good’ Valjean of the rest of the novel? And now onto what I find - for reasons I can’t put a finger on - to be a lovely sentence: They were both still there in the same attitude— she sleeping, he praying; only now, after the lapse of two months, her hair was gray and his was white. If I could art - in a serious fashion, not even a humourous-cartoons-of-Amis fashion - I would paint this. But Fantine has undergone a change of appearance, too, just like Valjean. The difference is that hers is far more clear in form - she is, essentially, one step closer to heaven, and this can be seen in her physical manifestation: Her whole person was trembling with an indescribable unfolding of wings, all ready to open wide and bear her away, which could be felt as they rustled, though they could not be seen. To see her thus, one would never have dreamed that she was an invalid whose life was almost despaired of. She resembled rather something on the point of soaring away than something on the point of dying. Despite all the tragedy she has undergone, Fantine has ended up, basically indescribably holy. And now I’m going to take the symbolism one step to far, and ask - if Fantine is so holy, so transfigured, why is her hair grey, not the symbolic white of Valjean’s? My only answer to this is that Fantine touched by the terrible things which have happened to her: she is holy, she has almost reached heaven, she thinks she has Cosette back, but at the same time she is greviously ill, and: Her breath issued from her breast with that tragic sound which is peculiar to those maladies, and which breaks the hearts of mothers when they are watching through the night beside their sleeping child who is condemned to death. The nineteenth century romanticisation of illness aside, this women is dying, and its horrible. Valjean, comparitively, still has a whole book in which he must star, and has not yet felt the consequences of the actions of the previous chapter. And for those of us who have read the rest of the book, we kind of know that he…doesn’t. Like, he ends up back in the galleys again, but he gets out with barely a chapter’s explanation, and kind of just goes on with his life. So Valjean is right now untarnished by the horrors of society, and not personally, but narratively revelling in the goodness of the deed he just did. And apparently colour symbolism is the thing that gets me writing way too much. I will stop now. Commentary Treblemirinlens I don’t know about productive, but I was 99% away from the internet for over a week. I like your thoughts on Valjean’s hair turning white as well as Fantine’s hair turning grey. Go for it with discussing color symbolism, it’s interesting stuff!